As for this one specific segment of the population, you are quite correct. Medical implant screening has become much better for those that are willing to accept the AIT machines and their possible down sides. As long as they are doing this fully informed, I support their decision.

Those with external, nonmetallic devices now fare worse. They should have been allowed to keep and request an option that suits their particular needs. If the new procedure allows only the area that alarms to be be cleared, then they too may see some improvement, but it will never be as simple as WTMD and HHMD as needed.

Yet, neither of these changes addresses the reason that some of us disagree. I am in the camp that the procedures are far more intrusive than is allowed constitutionally. Since there has yet to be a court case to clear the current procedures, we can only discuss these theoretically. I am perfectly happy to possibly be in the minority on this. Being believed by majority does make it right. We will see when the courts finally decide. They may very well take your side. I hope they do not.

That's what people here have said and is consistent with my own experience with AIT.

I too have the constitutional problem, not just the issue of the invasiveness of the searches themselves, but that it takes us to places we don't want to be.

As an example of what I mean, I'll go outside the security arena completely. A resort where some friends work allows day guests to use their grounds without renting a room. They recently changed their policy so that singles can't come in as day guests. I was chatting with a friend at the front desk a week after the change when a call came in from a couple who was coming as day guests. They wanted to bring a friend, but were told that singles were no longer allowed. So they said "OK, I'll bring two friends". That started a large discussion of how they're supposed to distinguish between two singles and a couple. My response was "Do you really want to go there?". Do you want to set some minimum number of dates that are required and ask people to prove them?

It's the same thing here: once you have a search of a certain invasiveness, you have to go places you don't want to go. Once you decide to do any sort of screening, there are some medical devices that you can't avoid dealing with in some way, but when you get as invasive as the current procedures are, you start having to get involved with determining if a diaper is soiled or not or dealing with menstrual pads. Those are places that I'm pretty sure nobody in TSA explicitly wanted to go, but (like the resort that bans singles and then has to decide what a "couple" means) they end up going there because of the intrusiveness of their policies.

I'm curious how TSO's are trained regarding these areas.

Numerous questions on PV and here regarding how TSO's clear these areas have gone unanswered.

I'm guessing when a TSO in training asks similar questions, they essentially go unanswered also.

In my opinion, any detailed discussion of the various alternative ways of clearing something specific or a special area are the most legitimate of things to be SSI. But I too am hoping that we can see some more general discussions of the philosphy involved.

I somewhat disagree. I simply cannot understand why knowing how a TSO clears a person wearing an adult diaper or a woman wearing a pad can be SSI

Literally thousands of people in these situations are "cleared" everyday.

I believe the reluctance to answer is because there is no logical, security based reason for how these are cleared, and in reality in 99.9% of the situations, "clearing" actually occurs. TSO simply refuse to go there.

You are dealing with people, at least some of whom were recruited via pizza boxes, who have NO discretion to speak of, who get docked if they let anything through, required by management to slavishly follow policy, and put these folks in a situation where they face a near-infinity of situations and have to make decisions.

This is completely asinine. Either this is a serious activity or it is not. If it is, you increase the pay and standards of those allowed to work in screening, select people for their ability to handle advanced training, make good decisions and provide customers with good treatment. And you fire everyone else.

Richard Kenner is absolutely right. It is asinine to go down the road of inspecting an old person's Depends.

I agree

You misunderstood me. There's no more reason for the most commonly-used such procedures to be SSI than having the order in which the body is patted-down be SSI. What I'm saying is legitimately SSI is the limit to which a TSO is allowed to go or the full list of procedures that can be used because such a list could be used to circumvent security.

got it....

Whenever one attempts to define a set of procedures on an "if this, then this, else this" protocol, then one must make an attempt to cover every conceivable variation of possibilities that may be presented. This is a very common process in manufacturing where there is a limited number of variations in the process. The part is a certain size or it is not. If it is do one thing, if it is not do something else. A certain part may have a large number of possible variances, but a huge effort is put out to define these is specific go/no go, yes/no, good/bad or other Boolean decisions.

It is my suspicion that the SOP lists a set of this possible Boolean logic decisions. It is not that they care what is in the SOP that is a concern, it is that it is likely very easy to deduce scenarios that, while uncommon, are likely given the variability of people and the sheer number that need to be screened that are not covered by the process.

When a situation presents itself that is not defined by their decision tree, there are four mostly unpleasant choices:

1. Do nothing, and let it go.
   
2. Try to make it fit a process that the process was not designed to address.
   
3. Make up new process on the fly.
   
4. Involve a decision-maker that may have only slightly more authority to make it up on the fly without repercussion.

The first is the antithesis of the tenet that "everyone can be a terrorist" and is thus resisted.

The last three are the source of most of the travesties about which we read.

The vast majority of the passenger interactions fit within the Boolean decision process. The SOP is SSI so as to protect not what the SOP says, but what it does not.

At least, that is my conjecture and analysis. I reserve the right to be wrong, but we can not know without the SOP.

With the level of employee they are recruiting, it is the only type process that can be made to work. The alternatives, such as employee empowerment, employee specialization, and cross-discipline non-direct supervision require an intelligent and continuously highly trained work force. That is not a description of most front line TSA employees. They are common in world-class manufacturing in which employees can be moved and trained specifically in the processes required. If they can not, they will be given an opportunity to find work more suitable to their skills.

Furthermore, the defined, unknown, process will eventually become so complex as new possibilities are entered into it that no one can even know what it addresses, much less the decisions defined by it. It is why even supervisors tell me my NEXUS is not acceptable. It is why they insist photography is not allowed when it is. It is why "say your name" is required when everything we read says that it is not. When there is too much to know, no one can know it all, and the process variability will rise up to display the ignorance of the process.

I don't know the current size of the combined military. Whatever it is doesn't really matter because we all know TSA is not screening to limit the threat to 0% and 1 terrorist from trusted sources vs the whole of that organization is likely to be missed by TSA regardless of the level of screening applied.

Since the start of this year we have had many more TSA employees violate the public trust yet TSA still doesn't screen its employees or other employees working at airports.

So I would still support advancing Trusted Traveler status to members of the military, current and retired, since doing so does not eliminate screening and we all know that TSA screening will still mitigate threats.

The TSA Complaint/Complement Form is marked SSI.

I think that demonstrates that TSA uses the SSI designation for just about any document they have and doing so devalues the designation.

There should be some form of oversight on what TSA marks SSI and procedures requiring the removal or downgrade of classification as required of the legitimate US Classification procedures.

+1 TSA is using an ever-expanding reactive list of items (or even actions - BDOs),. Each new 'threat' type results in another 'layer'. Perfect example: a couple TDCs completely screwed up with Noibi, so now TDCs are asking pax to state their name. This is so that the TDC will hopefully complete their job (name match) in the future.

Of course, the list is one-size-fits-all reactive. Instead of hiring qualified people who understand specifics but also understand underlying logic. TSOs follow stupid practices because they either aren't allowed to exercise judgment or because they truly don't get the point of what they are doing (other than following a list). Or they go the other way - so wrapped up in the 'boogey man' stories that they invent James Bond plots - 3-inch zip-ties 'surrendered' because they could be chained together and used as a 'restraining device'.

It benefits NO ONE by telling pax to refer to a TSA website that is confusing, incomplete, and not honored by TSOs anyway, particularly when any FSD can ratchet up the security requirements at any time and the first notice the pax get is being barked at while in line.

It's a split work force - you've got clearly competent (even if with attitude) people side by side with folks who clearly are, in come cases, functionally illiterate. Either those TSOs should never have been hired in the first place, because they are not qualified and are untrainable, or the current training materials are inadequate. Someone else posted about the ostomy bag - do they need cartoon materials? Well, if that is appropriate to the skill level and reading comprehension of your workforce, yes, use cartoons. Or actual live dummies with ostomy bags or prosthetics would have been even better.

It is also split by previous experience and aptitude. Those folks with previous LEO backgrounds (and some ex-military) still tend to approach things with a 'us vs. the perp' mentality. I'm sure some of those guys are happy to chop nuts all day long. Unfortunately, as one TSO posted, he has to encourage some TSOs to make sure and go all the way to the privates because they are reluctant to do so. Exactly. I suspect most of the reluctant ones 1) don't have an LEO/military background 2) have worked for TSA since prior to last fall and didn't initially sign on for daily grope sessions.

The answer is not better pay across the board. If I don't have the native intellect to be a nuclear physicist, all the training (and re-training) in the world and all the pay raises probably aren't going to make me rise to the level of a nuclear physicist.

I disagree with your LEO example as who's to say the LEO is not about to go postal? A off-duty LEO flying armed has procedures to follow and those procedures are in place for a reason but an off-duty LEO not flying armed but "carrying" (a knife or a gun) needs to be treated just like any other pax who "forgot" they were had the item on them

Not across the board. To attract the kind of intelligence, people skills and attitudes you see in other professional screening operations abroad, you *may* have to pay more IN ADDITION to allowing them to exercise their brains and training. If it costs you $20/hour to attract candidates who can spell cat if you spot them the "c" and the "t", then you pay $20 an hour. If it costs $30, then you pay $30...

The trouble is that even if TSA does this, they have dug themselves an enormous PR hole with the strip search and gropings that they do now, so much so that a job with TSA is generally seen as undesirable, as they are a national and international laughing-stock. TSA has a LOT of fixing to do, and that can only start AFTER they stop with the naked scanning and the crotch rubbing.